


Last Chance to Say

by Mephistophelia



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: Also I just watched Murder on the Orient Express so I'm gratuitously interested in train sex?, Happy ending for a wild change of pace, I'm back on my Danatole bullshit, Light Bondage, M/M, Post-Canon, Sex, Slow build to smut I'm sorry, it's all very consensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 17:09:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12845685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: The next day, Anatole left for Petersburg.He did not leave alone.





	Last Chance to Say

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, I don't usually write NSFW? Honestly this started out in my head as fluff, but for some reason that's...not where we ended up. If it's shit, humor me.

Anatole lay across the seat in the private train compartment. Flat on his back, he bent his legs at the hips, resting them straight up the wall with his heels against the wood paneling. His right arm was folded behind his head, elbow out. His left hand held a letter. The crimson upholstery crushed his hair, unwashed for several days, and sent it sticking up on one side.

The snowy countryside whipped past outside the window, a swirling dust that came in equal parts from the ground and the sky. The six o’clock train was forty-five minutes out of Moscow, and would not reach Petersburg until late that night.

Plenty of time, then, to be alone with thoughts Anatole did not want to have.

He looked at the piece of paper in his hand, his mouth twisted slightly into half a frown. A letter he’d started as the train left Moscow. Half the words on the page were stricken out. False starts and short stops, lines begun and abandoned before the words had fully formed.

_Natalie, you have to believe, I didn’t mean it like this_

_Natalie, Marya and Pierre are lying, I’m not_

_Natalie, Marya and Pierre are telling the truth but that doesn’t mean_

_Natalie please it doesn’t mean_

_Natalie God above I love you_

_Natalie I don’t_

_Natalie I_

_Natalie_

_Natalie_

_Natalie_

“ _Au diable,_ ” he muttered—to the devil with this—and balled up the page.

It didn’t matter. None of this mattered.

Everything mattered. It mattered so much Anatole ached with it.

He was leaving Moscow. Leaving everything he ever loved. 

_Leaving._

His emotion spilled over into petulance. It was easier than dealing with it, than working out why exactly he couldn’t breathe, why his ribs seemed to contract around his lungs like fingers. He pitched the balled-up letter into the air above him, watching its arced progress with mild interest. As it descended, he snatched it out of the air with his right hand, then passed it to his left and began the process again.

“Anatole, Jesus Christ.”

Anatole missed the paper in his surprise. It bounced neatly off his forehead before skittering to the floor.

The door to the compartment banged open. Anatole stared, too stunned to move. 

He’d left Moscow alone. Pierre had made sure of that.

And yet there was Fedya Dolokhov, standing in the doorway.

Usually calm, impassive as gunfire, Fedya looked more agitated than Anatole had ever seen him. He wore the thick coat of his military uniform, its sharp buttons gleaming in the compartment’s lamplight. Though it reached his knees, it hung open, revealing the sharp green of his uniform, the top three buttons of his shirt undone. Fedya’s face was flushed with cold, energy, or both. His fine dark eyes glittered.

It made no sense, Anatole thought, that Fedya could be so handsome.

It made no sense, Anatole thought a moment later, that Fedya could be _here._  

“Fedya,” Anatole said, unoriginally. “How—”

Fedya rolled his eyes. He leaned against the door of the compartment, arms folded across his chest, catching his breath. “I bought a ticket. Like a normal person. I’ve been trying to find you since we left Moscow, have you been _hiding_?”

Anatole paused. “Yes,” he said. “ _Un peu._ Fedya, I—”

“Move your legs, you selfish bastard,” Fedya said, and shoved Anatole’s ankles down off the wall with one hand.

Anatole yelped, surprised. He barely managed to catch himself before falling onto the compartment floor. Ungracefully, he straightened up, watching as Fedya slid the door closed and sat beside him. He ran a hand through his hair. It was too late to rescue it from its state of total ruin, but the least he could do was make an effort. Especially when his eyes couldn’t stop wandering to the open buttons of Fedya’s uniform. 

“Were you going to leave forever without telling me?” Fedya demanded.

Anatole flicked his eyes up to meet Fedya’s. “I thought you’d prefer that,” he said. “ _Mon cher,_ you could have stayed in Moscow without—”

Fedya laughed. That laugh silenced Anatole immediately. He was used to being laughed at. Everyone did it. Hélène. Pierre. Ippolyt. His father. His mother. Even Natalie laughed at him. Anatole the romantic. Anatole the joke. But it hurt, every time. Especially from Fedya.

“Honestly, Anatole,” Fedya said. “What in hell do you think I have to stay in Moscow for now?” 

_What do I have to stay in Moscow for?_

What did anyone have to stay in Moscow for?

Moscow.

The city that held Natalie. Her glittering eyes, her charming smile, her quick wit and graceful shoulders and her beauty that sent Anatole spiraling into weak-kneed idiocy.

The city that he sped away from, faster every moment, as the train gained momentum.

“Fedya, Natalie,” he began, and felt his throat close around the name. 

He was going to cry in front of Fedya. He knew before it even started that he would. And then Fedya would leave, the way everyone else had. Would leave him, because who wouldn’t? Stupid, reckless Anatole Kuragin, who was too weak to hold anything inside, who felt everything and was moved by everything and it was just too much, he _couldn’t._

He heard the sob leap from his throat. 

Then he heard Fedya’s voice, soft, kinder than Anatole deserved.

“Oh, Tolya. I know.”

And Anatole collapsed into Fedya’s arms.

Strong. Familiar. The scent of him like Moscow, like leather and sweat and snow, like a simple past that would never come again. Fedya stroked Anatole’s hair with one hand and pressed him close with the other, as Anatole buried himself in Fedya’s shoulder and sobbed. Undignified, shoulder-shaking sobs, audible and pathetic. 

Crying made him ugly, he knew. It blotched his face and reddened his eyes, ached his chest, stopped him from thinking straight. Hélène was pretty when she cried; Anatole had never been that. But it felt good, the hurt of weeping. A release he hadn’t known he needed. 

Fedya held him until the weeping stopped, held him until it steadied into deep shuddering gasps, until Anatole shook like a dead branch in the wind, and held him after that, until he stilled.

Then Fedya kissed the top of Anatole’s head, like doing devotion to an icon. 

Anatole pulled back, staring.

Had he just—

He couldn’t have meant that.

Fedya had never been tender like this. He laughed when Anatole’s emotions swept him away, dismissed sentiment in favor of fierceness and irony. It had been enough to make Anatole wonder, more than once, if Fedya even liked him at all, or if he only kept Anatole around for his name and his father’s money.

But as Fedya smiled and ran one callused thumb across Anatole’s cheek, brushing away the salt track of tears, that didn’t seem to be the right question to ask.

“I thought…” Anatole began.

What had he thought? 

That Fedya mocked him? That Fedya tolerated him?

That Fedya had been madly in love with Hélène, and enduring Anatole’s company had been the price he had to pay?

That Anatole could never love anyone else but Natasha?

That he’d ever loved Natasha at all?

“What did you think?” Fedya prompted. His voice sounded distant. Nervous. Afraid of what Anatole would say.

What had Anatole thought? A hundred thousand stupid things.

“I thought you wanted Hélène,” he said, finally, because it seemed easiest.

Fedya laughed again. It sent another thrill through Anatole’s chest, entirely different from the first. “Really?” he said. “Open your eyes, Tolya.”

Anatole’s eyes were certainly open now. He couldn’t stop staring.

“Your sister is lovely,” Fedya said. “But she was an excuse for me to be around you, and she knows it. It’s you I want. It’s you I’ve always wanted.”

 _It’s you I want._  

No one had ever said this to Anatole without him saying it first. He’d always pursued, rabidly, single-minded, aggressive. He’d never been courted. Never had the patience to let someone else move first. Never been asked, the way Fedya was asking now, as he reached out and held Anatole’s hands with almost desperate care.

“Tolya,” Fedya said, “I shouldn’t have come. I know. But you were leaving. You were leaving, and I’d lose you forever, and I couldn’t let you leave without asking.”

“Asking what?” Anatole’s voice sounded small and unfamiliar. 

“You can say no if you don’t,” Fedya said. He bit his lip, building up the courage. After a moment, the rest spilled from him, rushed and desperate. “But do you care for me? Not love, not like Natasha, I know that. But even a little?” 

Not like Natasha.

No.

Not like Natasha at all. 

Anatole could see clear now, for the first time in days. Weeks. Perhaps ever. 

Yes, he’d loved Natasha. She was beautiful and clever and eager and everything he needed in that moment. If the elopement had succeeded, they would have been happy. He could see that lost future, warm and clear and receding further into the distance with each belch of smoke from the train. 

Natasha was the spark of a moment, a spark they could have coaxed into flame.

Fedya was not that.

Fedya knew everything about Anatole. Every weakness, every mistake, every scar and imperfection and shortcoming. He knew Anatole better than anyone else did, ever had, ever would. And Fedya made fun of him, and joked with him, and cared for him, and was always, always there.

Fedya loved him. 

It was so obvious, now, now that Anatole was looking.

Those soft looks through the dim lighting of the club. The ones Anatole always assumed were directed at Hélène.

The care Fedya always took to get Anatole home in one piece. Anatole could never hold his liquor like Fedya, but when he stumbled home pathetic at three in the morning, he felt perfectly safe with Fedya’s strong hand guiding his hip, steadying him before he could fall.

That night with the carbine. 

Months ago, one of the few nights they hadn’t spent drinking, out at the edge of the city. On a whim, Fedya had shown Anatole how to shoot a cavalry-issue carbine, which Anatole, suited to the revolver, had never held before. Fedya pressed close against Anatole’s back, one hand steadying his shoulder, the other curled around his wrist, guiding him into the shot. The softness of Fedya’s breath against Anatole’s throat, so warm against the cold night. Anatole had felt electrified, Fedya so near to him, they had never been that near before, nothing between them, and he shivered and the shot went wild—

He shivered again now, remembering.

“Anatole,” Fedya said, and shifted on the seat. “You have to say something.” 

God. Had he really not said anything yet?

What was he supposed to say?

Words failed him, betrayed him completely. But he had never needed words to make himself understood. 

Anatole leaned forward and kissed Fedya, reckless and gentle and utterly, completely certain. 

Fedya gasped, both in surprise and want. In a moment, Anatole was tangled in his arms, Fedya’s fingers carding through his hair, the other arm strong and warm along his back. He clung to Fedya like a drowning man. The taste of him was as familiar as his smell, his touch, his smile. The pressure of his lips, the sandpaper tear of his beard against Anatole’s cheek, the soft rush of his breath as he hummed softly into Anatole’s kiss, all of it felt natural, beyond question.

Everything about Fedya was home. He should have seen that a long time ago.

Fedya broke the kiss first—if he hadn’t, Anatole could have carried on kissing him until the train pulled into the station in Petersburg. He looked at Anatole, those dark clever eyes wide, almost afraid to ask.

“Are you sure?” Fedya said.

Anatole ran one hand along Fedya’s brow, brushing the hair from his eyes. Fedya shivered at the touch.

“Fedya, I’m an idiot,” he said. 

“If you want me to deny it, well—”

“No, I know it. Let me…let me make it up to you?”

“You don’t have to,” Fedya said—though his eyes were wide, his voice strained. “If you don’t want to.” 

Anatole grinned. “Fedya,” he said. “I want nothing more.” 

Fedya didn’t need more permission than that.

In a moment, they were twisted together again, like freezing men drawn to a flame. There was no awkwardness, no hesitation. Just Fedya’s lips on his, and their bodies crushed together, mouth and chest and hips until Anatole’s back was pressed up into the upholstered corner of the seat, his legs curled around Fedya, pulling him closer. And Fedya’s hands, those confident, strong, callused hands slipped beneath Anatole’s shirt, reading his ribs and the column of his spine like the fretboard of a guitar. 

His lips were drifting, nipping at Anatole’s throat, adding new bruises to the faint ones Pierre had left the night before, but neither of them thought of that. Anatole couldn’t think beyond this moment, as Fedya sucked a bruise into the hollow above his collarbone.

“ _Merde—_ ” he gasped, his voice higher than he meant.

Fedya laughed. The gust of breath against Anatole’s neck was almost unbearable. “Have you done this before?” he asked. “With, I mean—”

“Once. Have you?”

“More than once.” Fedya’s grin was daring, wild, elated. “So maybe I should take the lead. This time.”

“God, yes, _hurry._ ” 

“Patience is a virtue, Prince Anatole,” Fedya growled, though his eyes were smiling.

“Fuck virtue—”

Fuck a number of things, apparently.

Fedya gripped Anatole by the hips and yanked him forward, _hard_ , until he lay flat on his back on the seat. Anatole gasped, startled. But the shock didn’t last long, as Fedya tossed off his overcoat and straddled Anatole’s hips. His uniform already half-unbuttoned, undressing from there was the work of a moment. Anatole stripped off his own shirt, intoxicated by the touch of Fedya’s bare skin against his own. Naked, Fedya looked like a god in the warm light of the compartment.

He kissed Anatole again, and Anatole grasped up toward him, his teeth lingering at Fedya’s lower lip, electrified and desperate.

And then Fedya, like the cruelest man on earth, sat up, leaving him.

Anatole whined, willing those lips to come back to his.

But he soon learned not to regret the loss. Fedya’s lips had better things to do.

Fedya kissed along Anatole’s collarbone, worrying his nipple with his teeth—and all the while, without looking, his hands travelled to the waistband of Anatole’s trousers. He stripped Anatole fully naked without letting his lips end their work, and Anatole felt cold and warm in a thousand places, and pathetic and desperate. His soft whimpers were really begging, at this point. But he’d beg on his knees, shred all his pride, for this.

Fedya’s kiss dipped between Anatole’s hipbones, then lower, too low, along the inner sweep of his thigh, and Anatole felt the moan building stronger than he could stop it. Fedya was circling, so close and yet three inches too far, and—

And God in Heaven, Fedya was teasing him.

No one teased Anatole. Not like this.

“ _Fils de putain_ , stop _missing_ ,” he gasped, as Fedya’s kiss lingered along the jut of Anatole’s hipbone.

“Don’t talk about my mother that way. Or I’ll leave you like this.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Fedya’s mouth quirked into a soft smile. “No? This isn’t my train. I could get off at Tver and let you think about your mistakes all the way to Petersburg.”

“Fedya, Christ, come on _—_ ”

“Impatient little thing, aren’t you,” Fedya said, and let his tongue skate the length of Anatole’s cock.

_Jesus._

His mouth was a wonder. Fedya’s lips closed around him, slowly working, just the tip at first, and Anatole screamed, just a tiny scream, because Jesus Christ this was impossible—but it wasn’t impossible, somehow, because Fedya was doing it.

Emboldened and exasperated, Anatole gripped Fedya’s hair and pulled his head forward, willing him to swallow deeper, to _hurry._

This did not work as he’d hoped.

Fedya stopped at once and looked up. Flushed, out of breath, his lips moist. Anatole had never seen a thing so beautiful in all his life.

“Remember what I said?” Fedya murmured.

“Fedya, please, I need—” 

“I’ll take the lead, I said.” 

Fedya’s words were cold, but his eyes were dancing. Without taking his eyes off Anatole, he reached toward the floor and picked up his narrow leather belt, which had fallen aside as he undressed. Anatole felt himself tense. He didn’t know where this was going, but God, he wanted to find out.

“If you can’t control yourself, Tolya,” Fedya said, “I’ll have to do it.”

Anatole was too stunned, too far gone, to protest. Fedya took both Anatole’s wrists in one strong grip and pinned them over his head. With his other hand, he formed a loop with the belt and tightened it around Anatole’s hands, binding them tight. Just shy of pain. His breath caught. The stiff leather against his skin was unreal. He strained, testing the hold. No movement. Nothing. Fedya wound the other end of the belt through the luggage rack above them—forcing Anatole up, keeping his wrists trapped above his head. 

“All right?” Fedya whispered, his breath teasing just beneath Anatole’s ear.

“Oh my _God_." 

“So that’s a yes?”

“How many times did you say you’d done this?”

“Enough to know. Now. Be still, Tolya. And be quiet, or I’ll have to gag you too.”

Wasn’t the point of a threat usually that you _didn’t_ want them to follow through? 

Wholly in control now, Fedya seemed even more confident. No faster, no more direct, but more luxurious now. As if Anatole’s body were a work of art, one he could admire and possess and display for his own pleasure.

It was thrilling, to be possessed that way.

Anatole’s hips bucked as Fedya’s lips slowly worked back to where he’d left off. Within the loop of the belt, Anatole’s fingers strained, reaching toward nothing, grasping at nothing. Though the rhythm of Fedya’s mouth did not slow, he took Anatole’s ankles one in each hand and forced his legs up. Anatole didn’t need to be told twice. He curled his legs around Fedya’s shoulders, and he couldn’t help it, he moaned as Fedya’s fingers slipped into him, one at a time, agonizingly slow. The third finger circled, delicately, perfectly timed as Fedya took Anatole’s full length in his mouth.

Anatole would have sat bolt upright with the shock if the belt around his wrists hadn’t jerked him short.

“Jesus, _fuck,_ Fedya—”

Fedya laughed and looked up, his wide eyes with faux-innocence. “Ready?” he asked.

Anatole nodded. Words dried in his throat. If he had his hands, he’d finish it himself, God, it was torture, this waiting.

“You have to ask nicely, Tolya.”

He groaned, straining hard at the leather binding his wrists. “ _Please._ ”

Fedya smirked. “Please what?”

Now that was a step too far. He was too frustrated for Russian.

“ _Va te faire chier, putain, j’suis pas ici pour_ —”

“We’ll work on it,” Fedya said, and thrust into Anatole.

God.

This.

Why had it not been like this, every time, every day, his entire life?

He felt complete, felt charged, felt helpless and powerful, dominant and dominated. The rhythm of Fedya’s hips was flawless, regular, rocking with the rhythm of the train, and he whimpered in time with it, knowing the sound would only urge Fedya deeper. The leather chafed against his wrists with each thrust.

It was perfect.

It was frightening.

He wanted nothing but this, ever again.

When it was over, Fedya laughed and collapsed, panting, with his head on Anatole’s chest. Anatole hung there, limp in the restraint, his hands trembling, his breathing irregular. When Fedya kissed him on the forehead, he wondered if he hadn’t died and gone to heaven.

They remained there, misted in sweat and exhausted, each listening to the other breathing.

Then, perhaps three seconds later, they heard a knock at the door.

“Monsieur?” came the voice of the conductor, from the corridor. “I heard…Is everything all right?”

Fedya dissolved into laughter, which he tried and failed to stifle in the crook of his elbow. Anatole coughed, then gathered what dignity he could in his current state: bruised, hoarse, naked, bound to the luggage rack, post-orgasmic, rapturous.

“ _Parfaitement bien_ ,” he called through the closed compartment door. “Don’t come in.”

#

Nine hours later, Fedya and Anatole stepped off onto the platform together, arriving in Petersburg. Anatole held one suitcase, Fedya none. The casual onlooker might not have noticed anything odd between them. Someone looking closely might have noticed that Fedya leaned into Anatole in a manner not entirely consistent with longtime friends, or that somehow the men had switched jackets between Moscow and Petersburg.

Only the most careful observer would have noticed the new turn to Anatole’s smile.

A smile that now said _Maybe exile isn’t so bad after all._


End file.
